Wednesday 8 June 2011

A Single Act of Honesty

Welcome to Laser Focus, a blog about seeing the truth. A blog about seeing the truth with such uncompromising intensity that every lie that stands in your way gets burned into oblivion. Does that sound like your style? Then read on.


The world is full of lies. You hear them every day. Some are little, like being asked "how are you?" and answering "I'm fine" when you're not. Some are bigger, like telling yourself everything is OK when deep down there's a nagging feeling that something is wrong - whether with one situation or with your entire life. And some are staggering, epic lies which cost lives and dictate the fates of entire nations, like "those who do not believe in my god must die".


But there's one lie that's at the root of them all. One lie that gives birth to all other lies. One lie so deep, so powerful and pernicious, that even the most honest people believe it without question. You have lived with this lie for your entire life. This lie has been your entire life. And right here, right now, with a single act of honesty, you can shatter that lie forever.


Here is that lie, pinned down, in its simplest, purest form:


"I exist".


Watch your reaction. Did you just think "that's nonsense, of course I exist"?


Then this is your test, the test of your honesty. The cowards who prefer to live in the cosiness of self-deception will close this page now, and go back to their everyday lives. Good riddance.


But I see you're still reading. You're thinking "of course I exist, but let's see what this guy has to say". Good, that's honesty. That's the ability to question what you believe to be true, the only power that can free you from any lie.


So follow along with me for a little, and let's see what we can see. Look at your body. Yep, the body exists. Look at your thoughts. Yep, they exist. Look at your feelings. Yep, feelings, right there. Now look at YOU.


Ah.


It's not there.


Look, really look at this. Prove to yourself that there's more than just a body, more than just thoughts, more than just feelings. Where is the self which they're all supposed to belong to? Can you see one anywhere? Anywhere at all?


Stop and just look for a couple of minutes. Something as big as the existence of the self is worth being sure of. Stop and look.


"But if there's no self, who's reading this right now?"


Good. An obvious question. Let me answer it with another question, and answer as honestly as you can:


How do you know there's anyone reading this?


How do you know that there isn't just a pair of eyes reading this text, and sending information to the brain, which turns it into an image of the world? How do you know there's something more than just the body doing its thing? Can you see anything other than the body doing its thing?


"But if no-one's reading this, who's thinking about what it means?"


How do you know someone's doing the thinking? How do you know that the brain isn't just generating thoughts, which then trigger other thoughts?


Again, be honest. Look at the process of thinking. Where do thoughts come from? Is there someone or something there, deciding "I'm going to think this thought now"? Or is that just another thought?


Turn on that laser focus. It's a power all human beings are born with, an enormous power to see the truth with crystal clarity no matter how many layers of deception it's been wrapped in. Maybe you didn't know you had it, or maybe you use it every day. Try it on this thing now.


Can you see anything, anywhere in reality, that corresponds to the idea of "I"? When you say "I exist", is there a thing called "I" in reality, or is it just a thought, just an idea in your head through which all your perceptions get filtered?


If you've looked, with perfect honesty, just for ten seconds, you're free. Free from the lie that an "I" exists, and from all the lies it spawns. Free from "I have to try to be a good person." Free from "I am a bad person". Free from "I have to avoid suffering because it'll hurt me." Free from "there is something I need to be happy". 


You are free, even, from "I need to be happy" itself. And free from ever having to lie, because there is no you to get hurt by admitting the truth.


If you haven't looked, do it now. You have nothing to lose. I mean that in every possible sense. If the self exists, then looking at it won't make it go away. If the self doesn't exist, then you can't lose it, and there isn't even a you to lose anything.


Look. There is no you.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I try to transpose a linear, logical, circuit based concept of existence upon the sum total of my biological and metaphysical being I cannot connect all of the wires, therefore I must not exist.

Alexei said...

I'm sorry to hear that. Having to prove something about reality by comparing one concept to another must be very stressful for you.

Instead, why not look at reality directly and see if it contains the thing the concept refers to?

Greg said...

Hello Velorien,

Thanks for you blog.

I've been on this "search" for a while, and even if some times seemed to have brought this clarity of "no-self", it just seems like again and again, the lie of being "someone", of being a separate "me", re-appears. No matter how deep I look, this "me" cannot be found. It feels obvious it's just a thought superimposed on whatever arise in life. Still, this "sense of me" is apparently still running and taken to be real somehow. Does it means the "looking" is not complete ?

Reading your post, putting myself in the position of looking, this thing arose : it is as if there was an unsolvable absolute contradiction in this simple fact of looking. Who is looking ? Who is doing the looking ? Who will achieve the recognition that the self is a lie ? The looking really fucking feels like a volition act, an act of (free) will... and the belief that "I" will have a direct look to see if this "sense of being a me" is real or not, just seems to feed this exact same "sense of me", and feed the lie, in an vicious loop.

Would you help and tell maybe where there's a bug ?

Thanks,
Greg

Greg said...

Velorien, another way of saying it is : if "I" don't exist, if "I" is a lie, how can "I" have any influence on the outcome of this "looking" ? How can "I" discover the non-existence/non-reality of "I" ?

Alexei said...

This comment mysteriously got deleted from the comments list before I could get to it, as did a follow-up saying "DO NOT DELETE MY POST THIS TIME" (sic) so I'm copy-pasting from the e-mail notification.

"Listen, guys.. you're all searching for a lost cause.

The I does exist, and it is explicable via science - however, you have to understand the triviality of searching any deeper than the concept of choice.

We cannot know what generates choice, we cannot know if future choice can be influenced by choice in the past.

Choice is quantum mechanical probability, and the mammalian frontal cortex is so tightly organized that very, VERY small differences imply comparatively enormous changes.

The question becomes one that CAN NOT be answered by the human brain, or anything that propagates information in 4 dimensions or less - where does the 'I' come from?

If you so desire to pursue this answer, you're going to need a lot of grounding social relationships to keep you from becoming very depressed from the amount of heavy LSD trips you'll be taking.

Do not use materialism as a realism to disregard life. You do exist, this man is simply running you into a cycle, one with an answer provided just right up front. Does it make you feel insane to pursue this cycle? If so, think about it - you're continually choosing to pursue an illogical argument of existentialism..

I really doubt anybody can prove me wrong. Anybody in the world. Oh, and if you're having trouble, consider this: the nature of a goal is to be external to the parameters that include the pursuant.. Did man know the wheel before he dreamed it?"

The reason nobody can prove you wrong, my friend, is that you have failed to advance a coherent argument. You say that the I can be explained by science, then say that the human brain can never explain it.

You bring in choice out of nowhere, assume that it exists, and then refer to quantum probability as if those words mean something for your argument without a detailed context.

You then make an unclear appeal to your audience, and throw in some philosophical terms to make it sound meaningful, and finish off with faux profundity.

If you think you have some devastating argument that there is a self, one so powerful it renders your *direct experience* irrelevant, then give it to me. Right now, you're just throwing random sentences at me and pretending they fit together.

Anonymous said...

Wow, very interesting little article.

"I" actually found great value in reading it. My personal conclusion was that what the concept of "I" refers to does not directly exist in this reality my body/mind is experiencing.

I do believe the "I" exists, but perhaps it can be understood to exist in some other reality, as if the true "I" is remotely controlling this body.

The value in this exercise is to realize that YOU are not YOUR BODY, and use this to take more control over life.

In my eyes, "I" still exist, but "I" am not in this reality. Perhaps even, I am the totality that contains this reality, and I am simply viewing a part of myself/my reality through this body/mind.

Good stuff, thanks for the post.

Alexei said...

Glad you found it useful.

If I were you, I would spend a bit more time on this issue, because there are some contradictions which shouldn't be left outstanding.

If your true "I" exists in a reality this body/mind can't experience, how do you know it's there at all? How can you have self-awareness if it's impossible to be aware of the self?

If you are the totality controlling this body/mind, in other words if you are the universe, how is that different from saying that there is no personal you? If all body/minds are controlled by the totality of the universe, that's another way of saying that they're like ants with no individual free will. Which is indeed true (though the ant metaphor only works so far), but it makes any concept of an "I" or "you" rather meaningless unless you're using them for convenient reference.

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